


The Gentle Fall

by Euphorion



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alcohol, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-25
Updated: 2016-12-25
Packaged: 2018-09-11 23:25:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9041111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Euphorion/pseuds/Euphorion
Summary: some boys being drunk separately, and eventually being drunk together.+  “Idiot,” he muttered to himself. What had he hoped? That showing up unannounced to take Yuuri up on a months-old, drunken offer would result in a whirlwind romance, where he remade Yuuri in his image and they took their place, hand in hand, as kings of the world?  He ran a hand into his hair and tugged, hard. Wake up, Vitya.





	

Victor knocked on the counter. “Another, please.”

The woman behind the bar levelled a look at him. “I know you’re foreign, but you do realize you’ve been drinking basically straight vodka for hours?”

Victor raised a hand, clenching his fist. “Ma’am, I’m from Russia, vodka runs in our veins like—like—” he opened the fist again, staring at his fingers. “Like. You know.”

“Blood?” The bartender suggested. “Usually.”

“Blood,” Victor agreed morosely, and gratefully downed the shot she slid him. “ _Nostrovia!_ ” he called, and then slumped forward onto the bar, his head on his arms. “God, what am I _doing_ here?”

Yuuri’s face danced in his vision. His body, sleek and determined and driven. Part of Victor hated forcing Yuuri to lose the weight he’d gained in the off-season—there had been something so appealing about his softness, his curves, the roundness of his jaw. He’d at least hoped to get his hands on him before he’d lost it all but—

But. Nothing was really what he’d hoped, was it?

“Idiot,” he muttered to himself. What had he hoped? That showing up unannounced to take Yuuri up on a months-old, drunken offer would result in a whirlwind romance, where he remade Yuuri in his image and they took their place, hand in hand, as kings of the world?

He ran a hand into his hair and tugged, hard. _Wake up, Vitya._

Today—Yuuri having lost the weight, having regained a body Victor was paradoxically much more familiar with—was especially hard to deal with. Was he supposed to watch Yuuri fail to grasp an eros Victor felt every time he looked at him? Could he watch Yuuri—in Victor’s old costume, Victor’s clothes tight against his skin—run his hands unthinkingly down abs Victor had seen doused in champagne, had felt pressed against his chest?

Today—Yuuri’s uncertainty giving way to certainty, the light in his eyes as their gazes met. At long last, he’d thought. He was willing to stop playing this idiot game with him, willing to reward Victor’s work. He'd finally managed to prove to Yuuri that he was serious, and maybe Yuuri would finally return the favor.

Today—Yuuri sweeping out a perfect leg & slicing his skate through Victor’s chest like so much pork cutlet.

_My eros is katsudon!_

Victor raised a hand, but not his head. “Another, please.”

+

“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me.” Phichit was smiling, but there was a note of genuine reproach to his voice. 

Yuuri sipped his sake and told himself he wasn’t stalling. “Tell you what?”

Phichit rolled his eyes, setting down his phone for maybe the first time since Yuuri had seen him this year, apart from when he was on the ice. “About Victor. I had to find out through instagram like everyone else! Like some fan.”

Yuuri smiled at him. “It’s not like you don’t get—and for that matter give—all your important life updates through instagram anyway,” he said, “and are you claiming you’re not my fan?”

Phichit narrowed his eyes at him. “Yuuri Katsuki.”

Yuuri sighed, letting his eyes slip closed. He was tired—so, so tired. He wanted to be back in his hotel room. He wanted to be home. Visions of his room in Hasetsu flickered in his mind’s eye, dim, silent, calm. The walls, stripped of their posters, too bare. Something rebellious in him said _stagnant_. The sake in his throat tasted of dust.

“I don’t know when I would have told you,” he said without opening his eyes. “It’s not like he warned me. He just—showed up. Naked, actually, in my family hot spring.”

Phichit was silent. Yuuri cracked an eye to see if he’d gotten bored and gone back to his phone. Instead, his friend was staring at him, eyes wide. “He didn’t tell you he was coming?”

Yuuri shook his head and tipped more sake into his cup. “I guess—I don’t know, he saw me skating to his routine and instead of deciding to get a restraining order he, um. Flew to Japan?”

Phichit slammed his hand flat on the table, his eyes intense. “That is straight-up the most romantic thing I have ever heard in my life.”

The sake caught in Yuuri’s throat, and he coughed, his cheeks heating. Getting himself under control, he choked, “it’s not romantic, it’s just—I don’t know, it’s Victor, he just. Does things.” He sucked his lower lip into his mouth, released it with a pop. “I think he wanted, like. A project.”

Phichit frowned at him, the expression so uncharacteristic that it made Yuuri swallow guiltily. “Ah—sorry, did I say something—”

“You think that’s what you are to him?” Phichit demanded. “You think he’s training you because he’s bored and then, what, he’s gonna drop you again? Yuuri, he kissed you.”

Yuuri stared at his sake, his gut twisting. He was drinking too fast, he’d said something stupid and now. Now he couldn’t stop thinking about Victor opening his arms to him, the soft parting of his lips. He’d been so breathless already, the last notes of Eros ringing in his head, his whole body calling out to Victor and then he’d been there, more concrete than ever before and his and the whole world had seen—

“We’re here for _you_ ,” he said, raising his eyes to Phichit’s, the effort of his smile like dragging a tree from the earth by its roots, his head left in empty, tumbling darkness. “You made history today.”

Phichit continued to glare at him—lower lip stuck out like a punk kid in a manga—and the worry in his eyes was like hard ice beneath Yuuri’s skates. His smile firmed. Victor was his weight; he wouldn’t allow it to pull his friend down on this golden, perfect evening. He reached out and tapped Phichit in the center of the forehead. “Drink, Prince of Thailand.”

Phichit batted his hand away, making a face. “Fine,” he said, “you can change the subject. But I’m gonna be keeping an eye on the Russian playboy and if he hurts you I’ll—I’ll swear him off forever and block him on all social media.”

Yuuri shook his head. “He won’t hurt me,” he said, because Victor wouldn’t. It wasn’t his fault if he was the knife Yuuri happened to use on himself.

+

“You know, when I first saw that instagram video I knew it would get your attention.”

Victor raised his eyes, squinting against the shifting glare of the city lights dancing on the water. He smiled. “Chris. _Dobriy vyecher._ ”

Chris set the champagne bottle and glasses on the edge of the pool and sat, slipping his feet into the water with a wince. “Russians,” he muttered, and then, picking up his previous thread with the skill of a weaver, “I didn't think you would actually go, though.”

Victor pushed his hair back from his face. He thought perhaps Chris would be disappointed or angry with him, but he seemed unbothered, almost pleased. “He invited me, no?”

Chris smirked. “With gusto.” He untwisted the cork of the champagne and popped it carefully out. “It was pretty hot.”

Victor leaned against the side of the pool next to him, accepting the champagne. “ _Pretty_ hot?” he asked, the offense in his voice only half faked. 

Chris shrugged. “If you like that kind of thing,” he said airily.

Victor laughed at him, disbelieving. “Chris, you are that kind of thing.”

Chris smiled against the lip of his champagne glass. “ _Peut-être_.” He drained his champagne and poured himself more. “I was worried, at first. I thought you were going soft.”

Victor drank, then sighed and leaned his head back to stare at the sky. “Am I not?” The clouds shifted above him, the moon obscured.

Chris chuckled. “You are,” he said, “but now I think softness is a good look on you.”

Victor raised a hand, spreading his fingers wider and wider until they ached, as if he could grasp the clouds if only he tried hard enough. “I don’t know,” he said.

Chris made a small, surprised noise. “You have regrets?”

Victor thought about the tears sliding down Yuuri’s face, his own stupid, misguided words, his impotence to break open the cage of anxiety that encased his—his. His protege, his inspiration, his partner, his joy. “Of course I have regrets,” he said, relaxing the tension in his arm and letting it fall. “But retiring to teach Yuuri is not one of them.” He licked his lips. “I only wish I knew what he wanted.”

Chris caught his hand and put a champagne flute in it. “Have you asked?”

Victor laughed, drained the glass, coughed, and laughed again. “Love and fear go hand in hand for Yuuri,” he said, and licked his lips. “And for me.” He turned to Chris, smiling. “If I ask and he says he does not want what I want?”

Chris refilled his glass. “And if he does?”

Victor rolled his head on his neck, not quite allowing himself to imagine that. “If he does he will tell me in his own time and in his own way.”

Whistling under his breath, Chris took away his glass and handed him the bottle instead. “Yuuri is certainly continuously surprising.”

Victor raised an eyebrow at him. “What do you mean?”

Chris grinned. “He’s taught you patience.”

Victor closed his eyes. “ _Ty ponyatiya ne imeyesh_ ,” he muttered, and drank.

+

Yuuri hunched his shoulders against the hundreds of stares he was surely getting. _There he is,_ he could almost hear them whisper. _He was doing so well up until the free skate._

He slid through the crowd, snagging a champagne flute and tilting it back. _What happened?_

He grit his teeth and found another. _What’s wrong with him?_

He found the drinks table and just lingered, keeping his head down. He was both glad Phichit wasn’t here and desperate for his company. His friend would try to reassure him, talk about comebacks and next years and things that felt so impossible, so unreal as to be cruel jokes at his expense. And yet. Being here alone might be worse. Bad enough he was an international disappointment. Did he have to be an international disappointment with no friends?

The champagne flutes were beginning to pile up beside him. He let his eyes drift, soft-focus, over the crowd. There was JJ with his girlfriend on his arm. Scraps of his theme drifted through Yuuri’s head and he shook it to clear it, annoyed. He’d watched JJ for a long time in the competitions leading up to the final. He’d been so sure he could knock him from the podium. Sure until he wasn’t, sure until the panic tangled around his feet and knocked him spectacularly to the ice.

He forced his gaze onward, groping for another glass. There was Michele and Sara Crispino—Yuuri privately vastly preferred the latter, both as a person and as a skater. And, gesturing wildly, Christophe Giametti, deep in conversation with—

Yuuri nearly choked on his champagne. He shouldn’t be surprised. He couldn’t be surprised. Of course Victor was here. Celebrating his fifth consecutive win. The darling of every skater to touch ice. Of course he would want to be here, to be buoyed up on the admiration and love of the whole party. He swallowed, the bubbles suddenly harsh in his throat. He was surprised Victor was even touching the ground. 

Drunk, self-indulgent, he let himself examine his idol properly. What would it be like, to be as comfortable in his presence as Chris clearly was? To sling an arm around him, to have him listen, head inclined, a slight smile playing around his lips? Could he even say anything worthy of Victor hearing?

“What are you doing here?”

It took a minute for him to register that the derisive voice was coming from outside his head, not inside—why would he be speaking to himself in Russian-accented English?—and when he tore his eyes from Victor he was only half surprised to see him. Yuri Plisetsky. The other Yuri, the younger Yuri, the rising star to his falling, failing, fallen.

“Getting drunk,” he said, because the thinking-part of him and the speaking-part of him weren’t quite connected right anymore. “Which is more than I can say for you.”

Plisetsky looked so disgusted Yuuri thought he might spit. “And staring at Viktor so hard your eyes might fall out,” he sneered. “You think he’d ever waste his time with someone who threw away his potential so spectacularly?”

 _No,_ said Yuuri’s brain. “Shut up,” slurred Yuuri’s mouth.

Plisetsky blinked like an offended cat, and suddenly everything was funny—hysterically, ghoulishly funny. He was fourteen, wearing his recent successes on his shoulders like a monarch’s cloak. Yuuri could basically see it trail on the floor after him, he was so short. He grinned, and Plisetsky’s face twisted even more into angry disbelief. “In fact,” Yuuri mumbled, stepping forward into his space and planting a slightly unsteady finger in his chest, “he’s gonna be my coach.”

+

“Yurioooo,” Yuuri sang, leaning back in his chair. The ceiling was a little bit swirly above him. “Yu-ri-o.”

Yurio sighed, his attention elsewhere—Yuuri had a good idea where—and sipped his champagne. “Bad enough you never started calling me by my actual name, did you have to write it wrong in the program?”

“I had to, you know, distinguish,” Yuuri said innocently, and let the legs of his chair come back down to earth before Yurio kicked them out from under him (his heart, however, remained floating and weightless). “Didn’t want it to be confusing.”

“Yours was written in kanji,” Yurio grumbled.

Yuuri grinned at him. “But you’re Yurio to me,” he said. “To the world you’re Yuri Plisetsky, Tinkerbell of Russia—”

“—that is not my title—”

“—tiny little delicate fairy of Russia—”

“—any other day but today you’d be dead—”

“—but to me, and mine, you’re Yurio. Our Yurio.” He propped his chin on his hand, batting his eyelashes at his friend.

Yurio made a face at him, but at least he wasn’t searching the crowds for Otabek anymore. Yuuri felt a tiny bit of selfish satisfaction in that. This was his day, after all.

“You know,” he said slowly, “you’re the reason this happened.”

Yuurio raised an eyebrow. “Pretty sure you finally actually proposing was the reason this happened, pork cutlet.”

Yuuri shook his head. “At that first banquet, when I made an idiot of myself—”

“—and then forgot about it for an entire year—”

Yuuri waved an indulgent hand. “—yes, and then forgot about it for an entire year. You pulled me out of my self-pity. You made me mad, so you made me remember I was worth something. You made me try.”

Slowly—like someone was tugging it upward with a fish hook—the corner of Yurio’s mouth turned up. “Yeah,” he said quietly, “I might be familiar with that feeling.”

Yuuri grinned back, because yeah—they’d been passing that feeling back and forth for years, borrowing anger and courage and drive whenever either of them ran dry. “Thanks for being here, Yuri.”

Yurio stared at him for a minute, his smile growing. “Victor,” he called, “come collect your husband, he’s making me feel sentimental.”

Yuuri tipped his head over backward so he could watch Victor detach himself from his conversation with Chris and his fiancee and come to join them. Even upside-down through blurred and drunken eyes he took Yuuri’s breath away—his perfect gray suit, his hair braided over one shoulder, his face—god, his eyes—

He would never get over the way Victor looked at him like—like Yuuri had just shown him something beautiful, something impossible, an awed sort of warmth. _He loves me_ , Yuuri thought. From where it was hanging out near the ceiling, his heart beat fluttery wings.

“Did anyone ever tell you you have tropical ocean eyes?” he asked, as Victor stopped behind him, staring down into his face.

“Mmm,” Victor mused. He was smiling, a small, helpless thing. “Possibly. Maybe a few times. I seem to recall some hastily conceived poetry during a trip to Curacao.”

Yuuri pouted. “I was proud of some of those rhymes.”

Victor ran fingers along his jaw and over his lips, and Yuuri couldn’t keep his pout alive, his lips parting instead. “You are poetry in motion, darling. Spoken…” Victor’s smile spread, and Yuri could almost feel it pressing his own wider. It was too intoxicating—he was too intoxicated—to feel any kind of offended.

Somehow Yurio had vanished, because Victor stole his seat, and Yuuri sat up and leaned forward. “I can’t believe you’re making fun of me on this, the day of my wedding—”

Victor settled his chin on one of his perfect hands. “It’s also my wedding,” he pointed out. “Doesn’t that give me some leeway?”

Yuuri narrowed his eyes at him. “Maaaybe,” he acknowledged, and then suddenly he didn’t want to be playing this game anymore, suddenly conversation itself felt false, felt like an unnecessary layer over a joy so deep it had no words. Maybe Victor was right (of course Victor was right), he—this. This wasn’t something to express in words. He’d tried—in poetry, in his vows—but there was really only ever one way he knew how to show Victor his love. He reached out and grabbed Victor’s hand. “Victor.”

Victor blinked at him, startled, and Yuuri transferred his grip to the back of his neck. “Victor,” he said again, letting his voice slide a little lower. He licked his lips, and Victor’s gaze dropped to his mouth. _Well_. Make that two ways. “Should we–we should go.”

Victor’s eyes were a little slow to leave his mouth, and it was that more than the unsteadiness in his step as he rose—pulling Yuri with him—that betrayed him. Yuri tangled his hand in Victor’s braid and tugged. “You’re drunk,” he accused. “You’ve been drinking without me.”

Victor probably raised his eyebrows at him, though it was hard to tell because his face was so close. “You’re one to talk,” he said, and then stopped talking, because Yuri kissed him. He meant it to be a hot and passionate kiss that told Victor exactly what he had in store for him but it ended up something quite slow and sweet and sloppy, Victor’s hands at his waist and on his jaw and he could feel the cool bands of his rings on his flushed skin, one familiar and one unfamiliar— _something old, something new_ —and suddenly he was laughing or possibly crying, whatever, his chest was tight and light at once and his breath was hiccuping from his lungs and Victor was murmuring in Russian in his ear, words Yuuri knew and words he didn’t, his cadence lilting and musical. 

“I love you,” Yuri said back, in Japanese, in English, in Russian, in Thai, every language he knew. “I love you, I love you.”

Victor’s lips pressed against his nose, his cheek, his temple. “I love you, _zolottse_. Let’s go home.”

**Author's Note:**

> happy holidays, all <3
> 
> (google translates the last term as "sweetheart", but it's important to know that it translates literally as "my gold".)


End file.
